If I had that kind of money I would do the same thing in the same place. He has 5 sons and a lot of grandchildren so why not.
Many years ago I did some work at Joan Kroc’s house (the owner of McDonalds) in La Jolla.
Her house was maybe 3500 square feet. It was no big deal.
She may have been a worth 20 times what Romney is worth, but her house was not that big.
Ok, it had a great view and a couple of hundred million dollars worth of paintings inside, but the home itself was modest.
Somebody’s building a Western White House.
Mitt Romney, ... is also working on plans to nearly quadruple the size of his $12 million oceanfront manse in La Jolla. ... Romney has filed an application with the city to bulldoze his 3,009-square-foot, single-story home ... and replace it with a two-story, 11,062-square-foot structure.
$12,000,000 for a 3,009 SF House? That's $3,988.00/SF !! It doesn't cost that much to build a 'sky scrapper' (Hi-Rise) on Chicago's 'Magnificent Mile', aka Michigan Avenue. Or anywhere on or near Chicago's "Gold Coast" (where Old Money rich families live).
So what will Mitten's new house be 'worth'? If $3,988/sf is the 'rule of thumb', then a new 11,000 sf house would be $43,868,000! That can't be right. It just can't be. It's insane. But if true it's no wonder people are fleeing Kalifornia in droves.
And 11,000 sf isn't 'that big' of a 'Mansion'. There's many in a certain Chicago Western suburb that are 14,000 sf and larger. And those 'cost' about $1,000 per sf tops, to buy one. But you better have a lot of loose change for the 'upkeep'. The property taxes alone are about $46,000 a year. (or 'were' a couple years ago)